Bonnie Young is new to the fashion calendar, but not to fashion, having started in the industry (working for Ralph Lauren) right after graduating from Cornell. She joined Donna Karan in 1992 where, from her base in Milan, Young traveled the world seeking inspiration for the company’s collections. She documented her findings in a book, Colors of The Vanishing Tribes, and amassed an important collection of tribal costume and jewelry. In 2007 Young left Donna Karan and soon started a childrenswear line, and once she discovered that mothers wanted to shop it for themselves, the seed of BY. Bonnie Young was planted. The line soft-launched last season in Paris, and Young made her New York Fashion Week debut with her sophomore collection today, presenting it at Gabby Karan De Felice’s Tribeca restaurant, Tutto il Giorno. The setting—a windowed wall facing cascading greens—complemented that of the dreamy, sylvan collection video shot by Young’s husband, Luca Babini, at Diandra Douglas’s Millbrook farm.

“I was really inspired by nature, the South, Savannah, and the Victorian era,” said Young, also citing “the juxtaposition of ’70s freedom and what was going on in Millbrook in the late ’60s [i.e. Timothy Leary’s experiments with psychedelic drugs].” Victoriana and the South . . . was Beyoncé’s Lemonade an influence as well? “I was blown away by Lemonade,” said Young, whose Bey-obsessed son insisted she watch it, “and that’s what I think sparked the whole Southern thing in my head.” But the South seen by Queen B is entirely different from to the South as seen by Young, a New Yorker who grew up in one of Long Island’s tony Five Towns: Lemonade influenced Young’s thinking, but not her designs, which have always been textile-driven. “I get this vision in my head and then the fabrics speak to me,” said the designer.